t I
calculated that the vessel's actual elevation above the water-line,
supposing you to measure it with a plummet up and down, did not exceed
twenty feet, if so much, the hollow in which she rested being above
twenty feet deep.

It was very evident that the schooner had in years gone by got embayed
in this ice when it was far to the southward, and had in course of time
been built up in it by floating masses. For how old the ice about the
poles may be who can tell? In those sunless worlds the frozen continents
may well possess the antiquity of the land. And who shall name the
monarch who filled the throne of Britain when this vast field broke away
from the main and started on its stealthy navigation sunwards?

CHAPTER IX.

I LOSE MY BOAT.

I lingered, I daresay, above twenty minutes contemplating this singular
crystal fossil of a ship, and considering whether I should go down to
her and ransack her for whatever might answer my turn. But she looked so
darkly secret under her white garb, and there was something so terrible
in the aspect of the motionless snow-clad sentinel who leaned upon the
rail, that my heart failed me, and I very easily persuaded myself to
believe that, first, it would take me longer to penetrate and search her
than it was proper I should be away from the boat; that, second, it was
scarce to be supposed her crew had left any provisions in her, or that,
if stores there were, they would be fit to eat; and that, finally, my
boat was so small it would be rash to put into her any the most trifling
matter that was not essential to the preservation of my life.

So, concluding to have nothing to do with the ghostly sparkling fabric,
I started for the body under the rock, and with some pain and
staggering, the ice being very jagged, lumpish, and deceitful to the
tread, arrived at it.

Nothing but the desire to possess the fine warm cloak could have tempted
me to handle or even to cast my eye upon the dead man again. I found
myself more scared by him now than at first. His attitude was so
lifelike that, though I knew him to be a corpse, had he risen on a
sudden the surprise of it could hardly have shocked me more than the
astonishment his posture raised. As a skeleton he could not have so
chilled and awed me; but so well preserved was his flesh by the cold,
that it was hard to persuade myself he was not breathing, and that,
though he feigned to be gazing downwards, he was not secretly observing